The 29th General Assembly of ICCROM

FAO Used as the Venue
Deliberations

 Representative from the Institute attended the 29th General Assembly of ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) held in Rome, Italy from November 18 through 20, 2015. ICCROM is an intergovernmental organization, the headquarters of which was established in Rome in 1959 following the resolution at the 9th Session of the UNESCO General Conference in 1956. Known as an advisory body to the World Heritage Committee, ICCROM has been working on the conservation of various movable or immovable cultural properties. Our Institute has been contributing to its activities particularly through training on the preservation and restoration of cultural properties using paper and Japanese lacquer.
 The General Assembly of ICCROM takes place every two years. As usual, new members of the Council were elected since almost half of its members’ term of office had expired. As a result, Mr. Wataru Kawanobe of our Institute was reelected as its member. New Council members were elected from Ireland, Argentina, Iran, the Netherlands, Canada, Korea, Tunisia, Norway and Jordan, while the members of UAE and France were reelected.
 From this General Assembly in 2015, a thematic discussion was held and disaster measures and reconstruction cases were introduced from the member states under the theme of “Climate Change and Natural Disasters: Culture cannot wait!” During the course, the adoption of the “Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030” and “Sendai Declaration” at the third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai in March of 2015 was also addressed with a focus. We really felt the great expectations of the member states toward Japan in these areas.
 The Institute will proactively join these international meetings in order to collect global trends on the protection of cultural properties, as well as to transmit Japanese activities widely.

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